Charles Weller, clinical assistant professor of history at WSU and visiting researcher at the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, examines a recurring trend in religious intolerance.
In 1543, German Reformation leader Martin Luther published a pamphlet titled “On the Jews and Their Lies.” As reflected in the title, one cardinal tenet underlying Luther’s work was that Jews, by the inherent nature of their faith, could not be trusted. They were, in Luther’s estimation, a threat to the well-being of society and should not be tolerated.
Luther’s ideas were nothing new in Christian Europe. Their seeds were planted as early as the first Christian gospels, particularly that of John, and supplemented along the way by John Chrysostom (347-407 CE), Augustine of Hippo (354-430), the Crusades (1095-1300s), the various Inquisitions (12th-16th centuries), the Third and Fourth Lateran Councils (1179 and 1215 CE), responses to the Black Death (1300s), the Franciscan Monk John of Capistrano (1386-1456 CE), Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519), and a host of papal decrees. Luther was simply reiterating a well-entrenched Christian European perspective. His aim was to help reinforce those views in his own day, adding his own weight of authority behind them.
But Luther was also aware that his choice to publish such a pamphlet in a rising age of print would perpetuate such views among future generations. And so it did. What Luther could not have foreseen was that his pamphlet would, nearly four centuries later, contribute to Nazi German efforts to completely exterminate Jews.
Like Luther’s pronouncements against The Jews and Their Lies, anti-Muslim propaganda inspired by Western religious and political leaders and their faithful supporters will, in the end, lead only to more unjust crimes against humanity. They will also help reify falsely constructed notions of two monolithic civilizations clashing against one another, leading to further unnecessary conflict and violence.